Support for the emulated e1000 nic was released around kvm 61 and it provides the best network IO performance for an emulated nic. Reportedly it performs close to the paravirtual network drivers which I think is impressive for device emulation. What you may not realize is that in order to use this emulated nic device on a windows guest you have to download and install a device driver in the guest. Let’s walk through installing and using it on a windows guest.

Downlaod the driver into your Running Windows Guest

Firstly boot up a windows guest and download the driver onto your running windows guest. For this example I’ll use an windows xp guest. The driver can be found here on intel’s website. Once you’ve downloaded the executable, you have to restart your windows guest using e1000 option before installation. If you try to install the driver without a virtual e1000 nic, the installation will fail with the following error “Cannot install drivers. No Intel® Adapters are present in this computer”.

Start KVM using the e1000 option

When you startup your windows guest you need to start it with a virtual e1000 nic. To do this start kvm using the –net nic,model=e1000 option. Below is an example.

qemu-system-x86_64 –hda windows.img –m 512 –net,nic,model=e1000

When the windows guest boots it will detect the new virtual e1000 hardware and prompt for installation of drivers. Do not install any drivers automatically; cancel that dialog window.

At this point install the driver downloaded earlier by double clicking the executable. The installation process will begin. Choose the default options and proceed with installation. 

Once the installation is complete you will see a message like the following. 

If you inspect the properties of your new nic under windows device manager, you will see some nifty features.

You should notice a performance improvement (unless you’re comparing to paravirtual drivers). For even better network performance use bridged networking rather than userspace networking. You can refer to another post I wrote on how to setup bridged networking on a Fedora host. Please feel free to drop a comment on your experience using the e1000.